Philips BDM 3470UP Ultrawide Monitor Review

Ultrawides are fun. There is no monitor big enough for the gamer – the pro may like to compress things a little so they can see every square millimetre at all times, but casual gamers like to marvel. Well, so do workers with more ‘serious’ to do with their PCs. People like, erm, me. Get me some windows open there and make ‘em big because I don’t want to squint either.

But workers don’t want to spend a fortune either, so it should be welcomed that Philips has re-launched its BDM 3470UP. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with this giant. Actually, speaking of giant, it really did not look like it was taking over my desk. I have a 27 inch next to me in a more traditional 16:9 ratio and this BDM 3470UP did not overpower it.

I did not walk in to work each morning and gasp at the sheer size of this ultrawide. It just sort of blended in nicely. I don’t need to delve in to all the clever bits here. I plugged in my HDMI, stuck in the power and easily found the little power switch under the skinny bezel. It is the far right one – the others I never touched.

This is all about working, not gaming. I am assured it has a myriad of adjustments for all sorts of detailed do-das. I didn’t need any of them.All I want is a switch and go monitor that lets my open three very big windows. It did that brilliantly. Us workers hammering the keyboard knocking out words rather than enemies are often over-looked. That doesn’t mean we don’t care, it is often that we don’t want to have to slave for six hours making sure some gamma setting is just right.

I need open windows to see things in the world taking place. I want Chrome to sit there with nine tabs fully working all the time. I need Photoshop open to occasionally sort out the odd images. I need Word right there in the middle to write things like this.

And this Philips BDM 3470UP does it all. I know you can swap windows quickly – I know you don’t really always need all this real estate. But I want to see lots of things simultaneously. I couldn’t also fix the live transmission of the Mecum car auction online, so needed my gaming monitor for that, but that’s only because I want to see the cars in nice big images while carrying on working. BUT, I could have done by sacrificing something else, size wise. But a ’74 Trans Am needs to be seen big. Now, if I had a pair of UDM 3470UPs sitting here, then, brilliant.

Prices at the time of writing were a bit all over the place, but set aside around £400, and probably less, and that’s a bargain for a monitor that won’t sell big. Now if everyone went for this style, the prices would tumble.So, some specs for those who care about these things. Resolution on the IPS LCD panel is 3440×1440 with viewing angles of 178 degrees. Stand goes up and down nicely with twists and tilts. I had it almost slammed to the surface of my desk, but it does rise to about 27cm from desk to bottom of bezel. Pretty high.

Connections are USB 2.0 x 2; USB 3.0 x 2 (1 w/fast charging); VGA; DVI-Dual Link; DisplayPort; and HDMI 2.0 x 1. In the box you will find cables for D-Sub, DVI-D, DP, HDMI, audio, and power. Putting it together took about five minutes – as usual with the great Philips systems, it took longer to get it out of the box than set up and working. At around 9.5kg, not horribly heavy either.

All I know is for me for work, it was great. I would image there are many out there like me who need a decent ultrawide but baulk at the thought of forking out numbers close to four figures for one. Gamers have their needs, I have mine. And right now, I need a Phillips BDM 3470UP on my desk sitting right next to my gaming monitor..